


Now Press Repeat

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, but only briefly, they come back lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 03:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7026061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The days pass in the exact same manner. They go out into the woods and hunt, Steve finds katniss tubers and wild berries and Tony thanks god that Steve is with him because he might have gone crazy without him.</p><p>It has been about two weeks of this, and they’d grown more comfortable in each other’s presence. Before, Steve was always this god, so full of light and good that Tony couldn’t bear to look at him, let alone touch him, for fear of leaving a stain on his innocence. But he’d always appreciated Steve’s face. It was so nice, and different now, with the blonde hair dripping into his eyes and the stubble, since they were shaving with a rudimentary knife.</p><p>Tony didn't know being displaced in time could be so hot. The face with stubble and long hair- Tony had trained himself not to blush every time Steve so much so as looked at him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now Press Repeat

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for cap-ironman's RBB challenge, with art provided by the lovely selofain on tumblr. Check out that art here (in case you want a better view rather than the one I added): http://img00.deviantart.net/66c8/i/2016/151/0/8/cap_iron_man_reverse_big_bang_2016__lost_by_selofain-da4enxy.jpg

Steve has a word on his left hip. He has a word on his left hip and it reads, “Captain.”

He hates the word. He hates it because at first he didn’t understand what it meant and when Bucky found his mark he would shout out, “Captain!” at increasingly random timings just to get Steve’s head to whip up.

Bucky has a mark too. His says, “my name’s Pat.” Steve thinks it is much more precise than his. Captain what Captain? He thinks he has to join the army and become a Captain in order for it to happen. Bucky shakes his head when he tells him, saying that he would not get into the army, that even if there was a war they wouldn’t take him, and that is _great_. He says this not unkindly, merely stating facts both of them already know. He shoves Steve and Steve shoves him back and he tells him not to say stuff like war because they would jinx it.

There is a war. It opens in the form of hellfire raining down on their seas and Steve reads the news and looks at Bucky and Bucky tells him they’ll be just fine.

People start to die, and once they do, the rest follow. He tries to help his country but they don't want him. They want Bucky, and no, no they cannot have Bucky without Steve, they are a package deal. But they take Bucky anyway. He goes on a boat away from Steve and they take everything he has.

So he goes off and joins the army and becomes an experimental guinea pig, but that is okay because Bucky is in the 107th and maybe if he gets stronger he can fight with him and make sure that Bucky is safe.

Then, overnight, Captain America. The first person to call him Captain is the lovely Peggy Carter. She has eyes like gold and Steve loves her, he really does. He asks if she has words. Maybe the words weren’t the first thing his soulmate said to him. Maybe they were the first thing he said to the reborn him. She tells him she does, but they are not his. Steve tries not to feel disappointed. After that, everyone calls him Captain for the first time. Politicians, brothers, medics, everyone. He holds off asking them if his words are theirs. He had done that so many times he thinks people are starting to find him desperate. Bucky comes to his room and thumps him so hard on the back that if he wasn’t all scienced up he would have broken his back. He says, “you'll find yours, and if you don't, you have me.” Steve just looks at him morosely.

Bucky falls a long way down. Steve thinks that he hates war, hates it so much he wanted to leave the planet and never come back. He doesn’t. He has a friend to avenge and a duty to uphold. He had to win for Bucky now. He had to win for Bucky and the soulmate he'll never find.

When he tilts the plane downwards to put it in the water, he thinks of the word on his left hip and apologises to the person he will never know and the people he is leaving behind. He tells Peggy he is sorry. He hopes she hears it. The water is cold, Steve freezes and chokes and then time is passing like wind through leaves and he doesn’t register it going anymore.

He wakes up in a bed. A girl leans over him. “Captain,” she greets. Steve immediately knows something is wrong because he felt the time slipping by like sand in his hands and this girl is too recent, her hair too bright and her smile too wide. His instincts kick in and he bolts.

The lights in the street blind him. He thinks of the soulmate he left behind and feels like he has lost everything.

* * *

 

Tony has words on the inside of his right wrist. His words are terrible. Rhodey’s at least says, “fuck!"

Tony gets a “Mr. Stark,” something so fucking lame he wants to scream every time he sees it. He hopes his soulmate is someone more interesting and laid back than it appears, because if they are his soulmate, then they should have to be able to put up with his incessant whining, bitching and sighing, as well as his habit to go for three days without sleep and then sleep for a week. There is no in-between, not with him. There were no grey areas in his life.

Everyone calls him Mr. Stark for the first time. His dad is only the best inventor of all time, amen, and he is only the smartest man in the northern hemisphere (and now he is just being modest), so he has given up on asking people if they have his words. He made an exception for Pepper. She did not have his words, but she had his heart, and she was henceforth the best friend to ever be a best friend ever. Although Rhodey is competing heavily for that spot.

When he is held by the terrorists, he thinks of his soulmate and the words he has imprinted on his skin. He thinks of how he might never find someone who would always choose him. So he fights to survive, and does, but at great cost. At night, in his own bed which doesn’t feel right, he tells the mark, “I lived for you,” and maybe, maybe that makes up for the lame first encounter he will get. Maybe it makes up for everything.

Space, he realizes, is very big, very cold, and overwhelming. He feels like he is being crushed by the enormity of what he is seeing, oppressed by the knowledge that the last thing he feels before he dies is an undeniable sense of smallness. He tells his mark, “goodbye, I hope you’re safe,” because he is lonely and sad and the mark does give him strength.

But then he doesn’t die. Steve is shaking him and Tony decides that he is going to live again because Steve is calling his name and he sounds terribly upset and distressed and maybe if fucking Captain America wants him to be alive then he can be alive. He thinks his dad would be proud when he opens his eyes. He thinks maybe he has done something right, for once, because Steve’s relieved laughter makes him feel like he is floating.

* * *

Months pass without a major incident, a peace that has Tony sitting uneasy in his leather chair. He thinks of space. He thinks of the vastness and how little they knew of everything and damns it all to hell.

"Steve Rogers is at the door, sir," Jarvis tells him. He sounds worried. "I am putting him on the screen now."

“Hi,” Steve says, when he appears on the monitor. There's dark circles under his eyes. His hair is covered in snowflakes; he is without a coat. “Can I come in?”

Tony gapes at the video paneling. After the Battle, he never thought he'd see Steve again. They'd gone their separate ways, Steve had found himself a job at a local art store and helped kids learn to paint and draw. He put his shield into his cupboard and only came over to Avengers tower when they had bonding sessions. Essentially, they watched Disney movies and fell asleep on the sofa. "What is my favourite cupcake flavor?” Tony asks, thinking Steve isn't real.

“The media thinks it is chocolate,” Steve replies, his voice hoarse from the cold. “But you and I both know it is red velvet for the irony.”

“The base flavor of red velvet is chocolate,” Tony tells him as he walks toward the door. “It is just packaged differently and sold at a higher price and people love it. Capitalism at it's finest, God bless America.”

When the heavy door opens, Steve tumbles inside, and then it shows that there is blood on his hands and multiple wounds on his legs. His stomach is slashed across the chest. Tony swears and moves straight into his boss mode. “Pepper,” he barks. “Get a medic. Cap- sofa now, the hell happened? You were standing out there like this and you didn’t tell me you were injured?”

“Like you would have believed me, you paranoid arse,” Steve laughs weakly, and collapses onto the sofa. “Hydra came after me.” At Tony’s stricken expression, Steve hurries to explain. He does this by tipping his neck back, and there, stark against his pale face, was a thin line around his neck, purple and blotchy. “They tried to decapitate me with a cutthroat wire.”

“Where are they?”

“Dead,” Steve deadpans. “Three of them. In my apartment. I made sure I was not followed.”

“You son of a bitch,” Tony breathes. “I’ll call Fury.”

The medic arrives and takes Steve away, and Steve is left with the memory of a worried glance and wandering hands and an angry voice on the phone, telling someone he’s hurt.

* * *

 

Tony convinces Steve to move into Avengers tower the whole Hydra incident. Before that, Avengers tower was purely ceremonial- only Tony lived there, and the place was used to coordinate missions and perform drills. Tony had babbled on and on about the security systems and all the fail safes that Jarvis had in place, but Steve suspected it was because Tony was simply lonely and wanted people around him.

A week after he moves in, Clint and Natasha turn up at the door. "My apartment was just invaded by Hydra assassins," Clint moans. "They tore up my comfy couch."

"I live with him," Natasha sounds unimpressed. "I dented my frying pan."

Tony beams at them. "We have spare rooms and four frying pans," he says, and they do.

The next thing Steve knows, Bruce shows up and shyly asks for lab access, and Tony ushers him into a room grinning and saying, "science bros live together, don't they?"

Bruce looks at the room, and then back at Tony and then says, "I have made worse life decisions," and puts his bag down on the bed.

Then they find Thor in their kitchen, putting a pop tart in the toaster. He's got a glass of orange juice in his hand- it looks positively tiny, and he's wearing a tank top and sweatpants, his long hair loose and messy over his shoulders. He turns when he hears them arrive, blinking at them solemnly. Then he says, as if it was a matter of great import, "the squeezed fruit juice is no longer."

"I'm going grocery shopping tomorrow. You can follow me," Tony huffs out a laugh, takes out eggs from the fridge and asks how he likes it, and just like that Thor has his own room too.

That is not to say that things were smooth. Clint wakes up screaming. Natasha doesn’t eat. Tony sleeps for days and then he doesn't sleep at all. Thor flinches every time he hears the word Asgard and Bruce builds an armor with Tony they call Veronica, and it is designed to kill him.

But there is some part of Steve, some wonderful, grateful part of him that thinks that this mess of broken shards is all he has and all he wants. Clint can make any situation humorous. Natasha makes wicked puns that has the team groaning. Thor shares wisdom and war cries and tells Tony things about magic and science that has Tony making t-shirts saying I HATE MAGIC, with other variations including SCIENCE IS MAGIC, MAGIC LOOKS LIKE A WORD WE SPELT WRONG. They sell wonderfully. He donates the proceeds to the Stark Relief Fund for Magical Maladies, a relief fund that Tony bitches about having had to make for ages.

Bruce makes curry to die for and teaches Steve basic science and anger control and Tony- Tony tells him that he doesn't have to be perfect, you know, because all of us are so far from it. Tony teaches Steve how to be human again.

He thinks he should ask Tony if he has words, but after a few months it is obvious that Tony does not like to talk about it. Whenever words are brought up he gets a bitter and forlorn expression that Steve thinks he has seen in the mirror. Everyone else has words. Clint has them on his ankle, they're Natasha's.

"It is why I didn't kill her," Clint says affectionately and wipes some whip cream on her nose.

"You wouldn't have been able to," Natasha deadpans, and then squeezes the whole bottle of whip cream on his face.

Thor glances, upset, at the his unmarked skin, and is distressed until Tony tells him that he's not even Midgardian, and that Jane doesn't have words too. This has Thor brightening up and giving Tony a gift later on- magical booze from Asgard that gives them the ability to float lazily on air. It's great fun, for drunks, and Tony's the best at it from his experience in the suit, but Clint comes a close second. Things got messy when it wore off- they fell from a height of a few metres and had bruised tailbones for a week, but Steve knew they wouldn't trade it for anything.

Bruce's words are from a girl they never see. Her name is Betty, but Bruce hurts so visibly every time he hears her name or sees his words, so Tony creates a skin-patch and releases it to the public to cover up marks if something terrible had happened to their soulmate and they wanted it hidden.

Sometimes, Steve thought that Tony did not get the credit he was due for taking care of the team. Ironically, he was their compass and essentially their caretaker, and whatever he could do to make things better, even if it meant tearing out his heart, he would do it. Tony had even implemented a wake up call- whenever their heart rates rose too fast when they were sleeping, a short noise by Jarvis would wake them up before things got too bad. But hardly anyone took care of him in return, which is probably why he is hearing Jarvis ask him to get Tony to bed before he dies of exhaustion.

He makes a mental note to ask Tony to take better care of himself, but it never happens. He should’ve known.

* * *

 

They stick together, and then they become a formidable fighting force, because they are a team, finally. The events of Ultron pushed them away and locked them up in separate rooms, but eventually they’d broken through the walls through sheer willpower. And now- now Steve throws Tony his shield midway in a fight and Tony swings it effortlessly, thwacks the man soundly across the head and tosses it Natasha, who slams it into the man’s chest. Sam catches it as they go, flying easily up and over with it, and then drops it back down to Steve who holds it like someone born to. They fit together seamlessly, sliding into each other’s space during a fight and moving like they knew exactly where the other would be. It is beautiful, the way they fight, something inherently organized in the chaos.

They’re going neck to neck with someone who magic now, her hair long and blonde and sharp like a whip. She can summon up obsidian figures that pounce on them, claws as sharp as vibranium.

They've just got her down when she laughs, high-pitched and bitter, and then makes a mad dive for Steve. Something about his sheer goodness made all the villains want to take him out. Tony can't have that, this is Steve- his Steve, and slides in front of him. It’s just as well, because then a bright light fills his vision and he loses all sense of feeling. The last thing he thinks is that he is glad it is not Steve.

* * *

 

Tony Stark thinks that dying should be more painful and less bright. Well, at least, it should feel remotely painful, he’s pretty sure that people don’t go to their death peacefully. Tony is sure he wouldn’t, he’d kick and scream the whole way, and then maybe the person bringing him to his doom would get irritated and drop him. That had happened once before, you know, with the whole black hole into space dimension thing that occurred less than two years ago, so Tony considers himself a sort of expert on dying but guess what! It was almost like Death took one look at him and then immediately tried to return him without the original receipt.

He becomes conscious of the fact that he is moving – then he hits something hard and has the wind knocked out of him- pain lances through his body and he feels like he had been thrown through a blender set on puree. There was the pain he was talking about, but it came with a disturbing grasp of the fact that he was not dead and an intense nausea, which Tony could definitely do without.

He blinks a few times, clearing the remaining brightness from his eyes, and then forgets to do anything but stare. He can see his crash site, an ugly scar in the middle of a field of wildflowers. He frowns and looks up. Beyond the scar, a range of mountain peaks loomed over him like monoliths, and appear to stretch to a point at infinity. On his left was a seemingly endless expanse of grass and flowers, and was in every sense of the word a meadow. On the right was a heavily wooded forest, overgrown in a chaotic yet beautiful sort of way. Tall pine trees swayed in the breeze, and there were others Tony could not identify, and his heart, for some reason, thrilled at the prospect of wandering such a place.

Tony doesn’t know what to make of this. “This is the Garden of Eden?”

“No, sir,” a voice replies, and Tony yells, before realising with a slight sinking feeling that it was Jarvis. “We appear to be in the middle of a…paradise, so to speak.”

“Okay, so not dead,” Tony notes, the Iron Man suit clunking as he stood up. “You’re getting reception, so that’s good.”

“My location services appear to be hampered,” Jarvis says regretfully, and he is about to continue when a hole six feet above appears with a terrible roar and Steve Rogers, decked out in full uniform, falls through it. He hits the ground hard, sending dirt and grass flying and appears to be comatose. Tony stares at him. “Did I do that too? Cause god that looked awful.”

Tony walks over to Steve and pats him gently, rolling back his gauntlets to slap Steve’s face repeatedly. “Wake up, old man; I have no idea where we are, you’re our navigation expert. Also, the fuck are you doing here I stepped in front of you so that you wouldn't be, you honestly suck at staying alive.“

Steve doesn’t reply, but he is alive, so Tony huffs and sits back on his haunches, his face plate rolling up. At once, he is assaulted by the scents of a myriad of different flowers and god knows what else, and he takes a deep breath in order to ground himself. He briefly wonders if he is dreaming, and grabs Steve’s hand to make sure. In dreams, you had extra fingers, but Steve had all ten. He is counting them one more time when Steve gasps and his eyes fly open. The world flips over, and Tony shouts, until the world stops spinning and Steve realises he has Tony Stark in a chokehold. He blinks again and leaps off him like he’d been burned.

There's a moment of silence.

"Where are we?"

“No clue. Jarvis can’t get a read, and it seems pretty Earth, so we are somewhere on our planet. As far as I can tell there is no one but us.”

Steve huffs. “You stepped in front of me, but the blast was big enough to get me too,” he says. “Thank you, though.”

“Captain,” Tony says with full intent. “I will always try to save you instead of me. Haven’t you realized that by now?”

Steve shrugs. “I was hoping you’d realise that your life is worth it too.”

Tony gives him a look. Steve sighs and spins around in a circle, beginning to climb the hill. On the crest of the hill, the valley they are in reveals itself to be a sunken half-moon shape, and they were just on the outskirts of the valley. In the middle of the half-moon, there was a tall tower. It teetered here and there and seemed like it was a patchwork job, like someone ended it halfway and continued the rest with different materials.

“Welp,” Tony deadpans. “We’re lost. Jarvis, any ideas?”

There is no answer from the AI, and Tony frowns. Steve looks over, concerned. “Jarvis can’t find anything, and the only thing I see is that tower.”

Steve eyes it, calculating the distance. “Well, let’s go check it out, Iron Man,” Steve says, shrugging his shoulders. “Carry me, will you?”

Tony laughs and holds out his hand. “What an honour, Captain.”

Steve hits him and Tony is still laughing as he swoops him up in a bridal carry and takes off for the tower. His brain whirrs, Steve a dead weight in his arms. There's a nagging feeling that something is wrong.He tried thinking of his father, because that always got him out of dreams or comas, but even thinking of how he must have died didn’t wake him up. He came to the conclusion that he was not dreaming, that they’d been teleported here magically. Tony tells Steve this, Steve says that he is probably right and Tony wants to scream because fuck magic, fuck it all to hell.

They land, staring up in awe at the tower. Tony doesn’t even know how it is still standing.  It is old and creaky, and covered from door to roof in ivy. It has a heavy oak door with a brass knocker in the shape of a wolf. Tony thinks if he had a proper cottage in the woods he'd give it this door. He pushes it open, slowly, and the place reveals itself to be pitch black. Tony turns on his lights.

The inside is dusty, and worn, with the remains of an old fire still sitting in the fireplace. There are thrown pelts on the floor, and a long, winding staircase. Tony follows it up, and it opens into a small bedroom, with a huge double bed. There are more furs, an antique hunting rifle sits in a position of honour on a shelf, and another door leads into an ancient bathroom. Tony stares. Steve pokes the furs to check if they’re real. They are real. Steve shudders.

Jarvis chooses this moment to speak out, causing the two of them to yell in fright. “Sorry,” he apologises. “But the stars are not in the proper alignment.”

Tony and Steve exchange looks. “The stars are not in position for this tribute,” Steve suggests, and Tony cracks up laughing.

“Like he said! Stars, can’t do it,” Tony says dramatically as he meanders his way over to a window, where they seem to several hours from sundown. “Not today.”

Jarvis is silent. If he was human Tony suspected that he would be judging them. “No, sir,” he says after a while. “I mean the stars are not in proper arrangement for this time. We appear to be somewhere in the fifteenth century.”

There is a very long pause. Steve gets a stricken expression. “We’re going to be burnt as witches.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tony says. “That didn’t start till the sixteenth century.”

“Home?” Steve asks pleadingly.

“One crisis at a time,” he takes a deep breath. “I cannot build a time machine.”

“So then we wait for the others to come get us. Thor could do some magic.”

“It would probably require Loki,” Tony groans. “I hate owing that guy, he is an asshole."

Steve pales. “What if it does?”

Tony stares at him, and then sits heavily on the bed. It gives a protesting creak and dust billows from the sheets. “I have a Loki contingency plan,” he admits. “I worked with Thor- he was very unwilling, mind you, until I told him how many people died during Loki’s last visit to Earth. I hope he remembers it, in case. The woman, she might have been Asgardian. And choosing you would guarantee that the others would come after you, I must have been unpredicted."

“What do you mean?”

Tony looks at him as if he is stupid. “Steve. Do you really think the others would be comfortable letting Loki out of whatever cell he currently rots in if it was me who had been teleported to the fifteenth century? The opportunity cost is massive, no one would go for it.”

“They’re your friends,” Steve says aghast.

“And they are smarter than we give them credit for,” Tony nods. “They would see. But it might not even require Loki,” he muses. Steve looks up at him. “They could work on Wanda. Her powers are unimaginable and seemingly unlimited; she’s a little nuclear reactor. I think she could learn how to focus it at a point and pull us out, especially if Vision helps.”

“That would take years,” Steve says pragmatically and takes off his helmet, his blonde hair mussed. “She has trouble with finer details, and breaking the fabric of time would be even harder.”

“Then we wait,” Tony looks up at him, eyes downcast. “If that is what it takes.”

There’s silence, and then he says with disgust, "We're going to be here for a while, and I'm in jeans and a t shirt."

Steve laughs. "There were a few cloaks hanging in front, we could use that. I'm in the full uniform and nothing under."

"Nothing?" Tony waggles his eyebrows.

Steve's eyebrows furrow and then come to a realisation. He gives Tony a look and Tony cackles.

Tony meanders his way downstairs again, exploring every nook and cranny of the tower. The tower itself carried an air of neglect, yet it was not dilapidated. It had received just enough care to avoid crumbling into ruin, but not enough to sustain it beautifully.

The back door- a flimsy wooden panel compared to the massive oak that is the front- was open and bangs violently against the stone wall, even though there was but a little breeze. Tony finds it odd that nothing had wandered in- the place looked like it's been vacated for months on end and yet the wood of the exposed floor had barely even turned colour. Tony is so absorbed with theories of how the wood escaped rot when Steve ecstatically shouts, "candles!"

He jumps and whirls around, and sees Steve standing before him, arms laden with candles of varying length and size.

"There are about six hundred more," Steve says, delighted. Candles threaten to spill out from his hands and onto the floor so Tony hastily grabs a few. "Plus there's tons of wax we can use to make more."

Tony wonders if he should tell Steve about the wood but decided against it. Instead he closes the door with a heavy thud and starts to strategically position the candles such that it gave them the maximum light with the minimum amount of candles. To his surprise, he finds melted candles in the exact same position that he chooses to place them- including the one on top of the cupboard. Tony actually had to climb on top of a chair and hope to god he didn't breathe in any disease when he did so, and yet there was a stump waiting there for him like an unwanted Christmas present. He's pondering this coincidence when Steve yells.

Tony knows that yell intimately. It's the what the fuck technology yell that Steve makes every time he pushes a button and it does the opposite of what he wants it to do. Once, Steve has pressed something thinking it was the button for the elevator- but it wasn't and it opened a trapdoor right beneath his feet. It was meant as a prank for Barton but Steve had quite literally fallen for it first. Tony had laughed himself hoarse and then gotten a pie in the face the next day.

He runs up the stairs, wincing as they creak in annoyance. He bursts into the bedroom, calls out his name and receives a choked answer from the bathroom. If Steve is jerking off in there- well, Tony actually has mixed feelings about that.

He nudges open the door and sees Steve standing stock still, staring like he'd seen a ghost at the bathtub.

"Steve?" He questions, moving forward. He looks at the bathtub- it's slowly filling with water. He stares, looks at Steve again and then gets it. "Holy shit."

Steve nods gravely.

"How the fuck?" Tony breathes. "Running water was not invented in the  fifteenth century. Whoever lived here was ahead of his time. Is the water from the river? I hear groaning. Some pipes are loose," he makes a mental note to fix it. Maybe if Pipe Man came back while they were still here Tony could appease him by showing his improved pipes. "Was the water red when it first came out?"

"No," Steve paces the tiny bathroom nervously. "No, it wasn't."

"So the pipes aren't rusty, which means it's either new, or not using iron."

Steve decides to do the things he can do while Tony stares hard at the wall, so he pulls the sheets off the bed and brings it into the bathroom. Together they shake off the dust, which flies off the sheets like a swarm of locusts. Tony shies away from it. Steve laughs and shakes a pillow at him and he chokes dramatically and falls over.  

"You've faced down hordes of alien armies," Steve starts, dunking them into the water. "And yet you're defeated by a few dust bunnies.  

"They're evil!" Tony defends himself, and allows himself to be dragged back upright. "Besides, my suit has air purification filters."

Steve snorts, and Tony points in the direction of the fireplace. "I'm going to make a fire instead."

"Good luck," Steve raises an eyebrow doubtfully.

Tony swats him.

When Steve's done he carried the sopping sheets downstairs and found the room to be merrily lit with candles and a healthy fire in the fireplace. Tony proudly presents his fire and Steve laughs, placing the sheets on the ground. "Where did the technologically reliant Tony Stark learn how to make a fire?"

"I was a teenage pyromaniac," Tony shrugs. "Nothing massive, just paper, ice cream sticks, the occasional flamethrower."

Steve chokes.

"Plus there's science behind combustion-" Tony continues, and Steve makes an exaggerated pained expression and Tony laughs.

They sit comfortable silence for a while, each one doing their best to convince the other that they weren’t freaking out.

"Okay," Tony huffs and groans as he stands. "I'm gonna get food."

"What," Steve sounds amused. "You're going hunting?"

"I've got a gun," Tony is affronted. "And a tracking system thanks to Jarvis. I'll be fine."

Steve shrugs. "We could do it naturally."

"Tomorrow. I'm hungry now," Tony whines and Steve laughs, sees him off.

He takes the time that he has alone to sit and stare dumbly at the fire. It crackles and pops but all Steve can think about is that he's sick of being out of time. He's just so tired.

Steve had also learnt, over the years of incessant warfare and fighting to trust his instincts. It sounds terribly corny, but it works. Humans were once hunters too- essentially they were- are- animals, and just as with domesticated animals they'd dulled their natural fight or flight instincts for computers and houses and cars and being the apex of apex predators. Because that's what they were. In terms of killing, no one could do it more efficiently or sadistically than a human.

Steve is alive because of his fight or flight instincts. He sits in the living room and it feels deceptively cosy. The candles, the fire, the rough stone of the walls- it was always where he wanted to run to when advancements in the twenty first century became too much. He thinks of Tony, of the water pipes, of the candle stump he found in the bathroom. A candle stump wasn't out of the ordinary, but it had been warm, as if it had only recently melted down, as if it had been mere minutes since the candle had flickered out and they'd arrived at the tower.

There's a sudden groan from the walls and Steve yelps before smacking himself. Ghosts aren't real, and even if they were, they would not be lurking in some tower in Scandinavia. Actually, now that he'd thought of that, it did sound plausible. Steve sighs and starts to search the house again- anything to take his mind off the creaking of the stairs.

Meanwhile, Tony is face to face with a deer. He fights a moral war in himself that eventually loses out to the thought of Steve alone in the tower and his stomach. The repulsor blast burns a small section of the meat, but other than that it find and he varies it back, glad he didn't use a gun.

If he had, the wound wouldn't be cauterized and so it wouldn't have stopped bleeding. It would've stained his suit and he would've been sad. He drops the deer outside of the tower and steps out of the suit fluidly while walking into the tower.

“Steve?”

There’s no reply.

“Steve!”

There’s a faint noise. Steve comes huffing to the door, his hair covered with dust. He holds up something triumphantly.

Tony raises a quizzical eyebrow. “Charcoal?”

“Yeah, but it’s whittled down to a pencil. I could draw.” Steve is delighted.

“Like a caveman,” Tony snorts.

He sighs.

* * *

 

Tony left the gutting of the deer to Steve because- _no, thank you._ He went upstairs to take a shower and by the time he was done, Steve had spit some meat over the fire and hung the rest up to dry.

The meat was gamier than Tony was used to, but it was the best they had. The real trouble came with sleeping. There was only one bed, and it was covered with dry sheets and dozens of pillows that sunk beneath Tony’s weight. Steve grimaces when he sees it.

“We can alternate,” Steve says, at the same time Tony says, “We can share.”

They stare  at each other in surprise.

“Dude,” Tony musters all the _duh_ he can manage. “It’s a big ass bed. Temperatures will drop at night. We’re sharing.”

Steve shrugs, pulls off the loose cotton shirt…thing he was wearing (he didn’t really know what it was, except that it worked), and clambered into bed. Tony didn’t miss the fact that he chose the side nearer to the door.

He sighs and gets in the other side, making sure to stay as far away from Steve as possible. There’s an awkward silence for a while.

Steve says, “I don’t like this place.”

Tony vehemently agrees and they both laugh. It comforts both to know that the suit is standing guard outside the tower, but it doesn’t do much good. They fall asleep uneasily, and Tony dreams of hands grabbing him in the dark.

* * *

The days pass in the exact same manner. They go out into the woods and hunt, Steve finds katniss tubers and wild berries and Tony thanks god that Steve is with him because he might have gone crazy without him.

Right now, Tony is lying on a pile of furs. He makes a noise and moves slightly- and is instantly berated by Steve.

“Don’t move,”Steve says, and Tony turns his head to look at him. He’s drawing with the little charcoal pencil on a wide leaf. “If you move you’re going to ruin this.”

Tony sighs and falls back into his original position. “Draw me like one of your french girls,” he offers and Steve stops drawing long enough to chuck a piece of wood at him. Tony places the wood at his crotch and waggles his eyebrows and Steve smacks his forehead with the leaf.

It has been about two weeks of this, and they’d grown more comfortable in each other’s presence. Before, Steve was always this god, so full of light and good that Tony couldn’t bear to look at him, let alone touch him, for fear of leaving a stain on his innocence. But he’d always appreciated Steve’s face. It was so nice, and different now, with the blonde hair dripping into his eyes and the stubble, since they were shaving with a rudimentary knife.

The face with stubble and long hair- Tony had trained himself not to blush every time Steve so much so as looked at him.

“Are you getting my face?” Tony asks.

There’s a murmured reply.

“Draw me with my beard,” he continues morosely. “At least I’ll have it in my dreams.”

Steve snorts and agrees, and it is like this that the afternoon passes, until Tony falls asleep on the furs to the sound of Steve humming.

* * *

 

A few days later, Steve is washing rabbit blood off his hands. He’d set snares to catch them, they are too small for Tony’s repulsor. Just as he dunks his hands into a bucket filled with water, Tony rounds the corner and stops.

He huffs out a small laugh and sits down next to him. “I never thought I’d see you with blood on your hands.”

Steve gives him a long-suffering look that has Tony shrinking away because he’d seen that look in a mirror. Steve looks burdened in that moment. “I lived through a war,” he starts, as though about to tell Tony that he’d backed the car over the dog. “I’ve killed people, and some of them were innocent, just born under a different leader, just following orders. I’ve got red in my ledger too- you’re not the only one with blood on his hands.”

Tony stares at the curve of his face. He panics, because this is emotion at its finest and he is terrible at it.

“I just want you to know that I am not completely good,” he continues, hunched over, oppressed by the weight of expectation. “Everyone thinks that of me- it is exhausting.”

Tony reaches out a hand and squeezes his shoulder, hard enough for Steve to look over at him. “I’ve told you before, I’ll tell you again. You don’t have to be perfect all the time. Not for me, anyway.”

The grass rustles beneath their feet, the wind bringing the sweet scent of dozens of flowers. Steve’s hair moves in the wind and he looks out over the valley. “That is who I have created myself to be,” he wonders. “Who am I without it?”

Tony hums in agreement. Eventually, he says, “I created Tony Stark to be this suave, bitingly humorous and charismatic individual who couldn’t care less about anything. The media loves this Tony Stark. I bring in sales because of this…relatable arrogance and impenetrable sarcasm that creates a sort of enigma about me. I’m the most elusive bachelor in the industry, but that’s not who I want to be, not really. I invented it after my parents died and now I don’t- if I stopped, who would I be?”

“Yourself,” Steve says, as though coming to a realization.

“No one likes me for me,” Tony laughs. He doesn’t even sound hurt by this, nor does he sound resigned. He says it like it is a fact.

“I like you more when you’re you,” Steve shrugs.

“Then you’d be one of the first,” he nudges his shoulder. “But I like you more like this too.”

Steve makes a noise in the back of his throat and looks back down at the grass. Tony looks at the dying sun instead, wondering if he’ll grow old here, with Steve and trees and stars, if his suit will turn to stone and surprise archaeologists and cement the idea of time travel. He thinks of the Avengers. He looks back over at Steve, his face framed by the orange glow, the tips of his hair set alight.

He thinks he could’ve been in worse company.

* * *

It is official. Steve wants to kiss the life out of Tony Stark, and he has no clue when this feeling happened. There was always…something there, at the start of it all, but it was more a need for an intense hate fuck. But now? All Steve wanted to do was kiss him and make sure he had enough sleep. He bravely resisted the urge to jump off the tower, that was only heightened when Tony appeared in the room and clapped him on the back. “Its due to proximity,” he breathes. “You’re not…crushing on him, you’re spending too much time around him.”

He turns around and smiles at Tony, who gives him a goofy grin that has him abruptly turning back to hide his face.

“Damnit,” he whispers, and somewhere god laughs.

* * *

The suspicions start small. The things Jarvis insists are there but have no heat signature. The claw marks on the back door. The smashed window 0ne morning. The dead deer, their pieces scattered and gnawed on. Steve tried to ignore them, really, he did, but when Tony comes in one morning furious and points to a huge claw mark on the suit that he knows something is terribly wrong.

Tony’s frown deepens as he explains his theory- that they weren’t alone, that there’s something in the forest.

“Scientifically wrong,” he says, after contemplating it. “But plausible. I’ve been tracking the movement of the deer herd. They were steadily moving east, but overnight they scattered. It's like they were running from something. There’s also been a significant decrease in population. I thought it was a disease we might have introduced.”

“Something smashed our window Tony,” Steve breathes, looking at the hole they had covered up with a deer pelt.

“So we have a hostile, unknown beast in the forest,” he shudders, and looks away. “If- sometimes, when we’re hunting, I get this feeling…like we’re being watched.”

Steve bites down hard on his lip and tries not to scream.

After that discussion, things went back to normal, albeit slightly more tense. They didn’t leave the tower except together, Jarvis always stood sentry and seeing the same curved walls everyday drove Tony insane. He fixed the loose pipes in the walls, tried to make soap, tried to make cheese, failed as he couldn’t find a good source of milk. By the time these were done, it had been another three or four weeks. Tony could feel the time go by like water in his hands.

The noises had increased at night, a loud, steady growling coming from outside the window. When they woke up in the morning, the grass outside would be trampled, a dozen huge prints crisscrossing each other. Steve shook at night from nightmares and Tony slept closer to him than ever, legs thrown over one another, desperate for reassurance and safety. Steve would smell like pine and leather and something unknown, and Tony’s chest was always warm and one day they gave up on pretending that how they were sleeping was in anyway platonic.

On that night, Steve had pressed his hand to Tony’s arc reactor and asked him, quietly, so quietly that Tony might’ve missed it, “what are your words?”

Tony pushed closer to him. “The worst,” he answered. “Mine is Mr. Stark.”

There’s silence on Steve’s end, before it was broken by pained laughter. “Mine is Captain,” he replied. “I guess we both have vague words.”

Tony sat up, and Steve does too after seeing the expression on his face. “The first thing I said to you,” he admitted, his heart beating so fast he thought his arc reactor would malfunction. “Was in Germany, was it not?”

Steve drew in a ragged breath. “You called me Captain.”

“You said Mr. Stark,” Tony whispered.

There’s silence.

“It could be a coincidence,” Steve offered. He felt almost giddy.

“If it is,” Tony said carefully, delicately. “Then we get to choose,” he paused meaningfully. “If we want-”

Steve huffed, interrupting him. He paused, looked up at him, and then Steve fisted his hand around Tony’s shirt and dragged him forward until- until, oh, okay, Tony could live with this decision, he could, Steve’s lips were chapped from the climate but they’re warm and Tony was sure he made a pathetic sound when Steve moved a hand to the side of his face.

When they finally parted, Tony moved his head to the crook of Steve’s neck and said, “I’ve done bad things.” He doesn’t have to say what.

“I know,” Steve replied. “We all have. But that doesn’t make you a villain, so let me choose you, will you?”

Tony mumbles something against Steve’s neck, and he breaks out in a smile.

* * *

 

Things don’t change much afterward, but there is an exponential increase in the amount of kisses. Tony has absolutely no problem with that, he does not. They almost forget the things in the forest when- when they come downstairs one day and there’s a dead deer just dripping onto the floor. There is a rancid smell in the air, one of rot and decay and disease that clouds the room and makes Tony feel sick.

Steve sucks in a breath and drops to his knees, fingers reaching out to touch the deer- and then there’s a sound of nails on a chalkboard, and something- oh god, something solidifies in front of them. Tony doesn’t- it is a Thing, with obsidian skin and pale blue eyes, like ice against a blue backdrop. Tony grabs Steve and stumbles away from the Thing, his eyes wide.

The smell of rot intensifies, as it grows clearer- purple vapour wafts off it and its skin starts to pull taut against bulging bones that have no basis in biology, round and mushy and hollow. Then the mouth- huge and split in two down the middle, filled with black teeth too many to fit into its mouth and so teeth hang out and drip onto the floor. It isn’t just a thing, it is a nightmare, it is a terror, it was doom and death and ruin. It was their end. Tony saw this as clearly as he saw the walls. They were going to die.

It drops something that hits the ground with a heavy clunk- Tony’s mask for his suit, barely recognizable, only a hunk of metal now. Tony doesn’t think anymore, he pulls Steve and they run out of the tower, running as fast as they can. The back door bangs open and the Thing gives chase, making an unnerving clicking sound that sounds like someone repeatedly clicking a pen as fast as they can.

Tony is so consumed by terror that it takes him too long to realise that the Thing is behaving like a bat- it was triangulating their position from the way the clicks would rebound off them. He can’t do anything about it, just run, his feet stumbling over one another and he’s running so blindly that if not for Steve he would’ve toppled over the edge of a ravine.

He screams and staggers back, bone aching and drooping, Steve holds him back, protective arms encircling his waist. His face- Tony had never seen him look so terrified, so hopeless, and it is in that look that Tony knows they’re as good as dead. What little optimism he had about their chances slips from his grasp. His hands shake, he can’t think, his fingers are clenched tight and he trembled violently.

The Thing eyes him, sniffs, and Tony stares at the face of fear incarnate, powerless. He lowers his eyes, blood pounding so hard he can hear it. His senses are on full alert, he can hear Steve’s breaths coming in sharp pants beside him- he can hear- _what is that_ \- he turns his head and then another Thing tackles them. The time before they fall is like an eternity compressed into a single second. Tony sees Steve’s eyes widen, and then they are dropping like stones, wind whistling through his hair,

Steve is shouting, desperately grasping at empty air- he can’t- he can’t save them, he can't do anything as the ground rushes up to meet them- Steve slams into the ground first, and the thump of his body hitting the earth is the last thing Tony hears before the pain lances up his body like a fire and he ceases to be.

The Things click in delight and appear next to their corpses, absorbing their energy from dying where they shouldn’t have. They can keep these for a long time before their minds turn to mush from the loops. They can keep them going for hundreds of years, feeding their master who sits patiently in a cell.

Meanwhile, the candle still lit in the bathroom burns quickly down, the back door is still open from their frantic run, the little charcoal pencil rolls under a pile of furs, the Things drag the deer away from the living room and there’s silence. The dust comes as if brought by a wind and coats over the place. And then Tony slams into the ground and creates a scar in a meadow not too far from an abandoned tower.

 

**.**

**.**

**.**

 

"How the fuck?" Tony breathes. "Running water was not invented in the fifteenth century. Whoever lived here was ahead of his time. Is the water from the river? I hear groaning. Some pipes are loose," he makes a mental note to fix it. Maybe if Pipe Man came back while they were still here Tony could appease him by showing his improved pipes. "Was the water red when it first came out?"

"No," Steve paces the tiny bathroom nervously. "No, it wasn't."

"So the pipes aren't rusty, which means it's either new, or not using iron."

Steve decides to do the things he can do while Tony stares hard at the wall, so he pulls the sheets off the bed and brings it into the bathroom. Together they shake off the dust, which flies off the sheets like a swarm of locusts. Tony shies away from it. Steve laughs and shakes a pillow at him and he chokes dramatically and falls over.  

 

**.**

**.**

**.**

 

I just want you to know that I am not completely good,” he continues, hunched over, oppressed by the weight of expectation. “Everyone thinks that of me- it is exhausting.”

Tony reaches out a hand and squeezes his shoulder, hard enough for Steve to look over at him. “I’ve told you before, I’ll tell you again. You don’t have to be perfect all the time. Not for me, anyway.”

The grass rustles beneath their feet, the wind bringing the sweet scent of dozens of flowers. Steve’s hair moves in the wind and he looks out over the valley. “That is who I have created myself to be,” he wonders. “Who am I without it?”

Tony hums in agreement. Eventually, he says, “I created Tony Stark to be this suave, bitingly humorous and charismatic individual who couldn’t care less about anything. The media loves this Tony Stark. I bring in sales because of this…relatable arrogance and impenetrable sarcasm that creates a sort of enigma about me. I’m the most elusive bachelor in the industry, but that’s not who I want to be, not really. I invented it after my parents died and now I don’t- if I stopped, who would I be?”

“Yourself,” Steve says, as though coming to a realization.

“No one likes me for me,” Tony laughs. He doesn’t even sound hurt by this, nor does he sound resigned. He says it like it is a fact.

“I like you more when you’re you,” Steve shrugs.

“Then you’d be one of the first,” he nudges his shoulder. “But I like you more like this too.”

Steve makes a noise in the back of his throat and looks back down at the grass. Tony looks at the dying sun instead, wondering if he’ll grow old here, with Steve and trees and stars, if his suit will turn to stone and surprise archaeologists and cement the idea of time travel. He thinks of the Avengers. He looks back over at Steve, his face framed by the orange glow, the tips of his hair set alight.

He thinks he could’ve been in worse company.

 

**.**

**.**

**.**

 

Steve huffed, interrupting Tony. He paused, looked up at him, and then Steve fisted his hand around Tony’s shirt and dragged him forward until- until, oh, okay, Tony could live with this decision, he could, Steve’s lips were chapped from the climate but they’re warm and Tony was sure he made a pathetic sound when Steve moved a hand to the side of his face.

When they finally parted, Tony moved his head to the crook of Steve’s neck and said, “I’ve done bad things.” He doesn’t have to say what.

“I know,” Steve replied. “We all have. But that doesn’t make you a villain, so let me choose you, will you?”

 

**.**

**.**

**.**

 

The Thing eyes him, sniffs, and Tony stares at the face of fear incarnate, powerless. He lowers his eyes, blood pounding so hard he can hear it. His senses are on full alert, he can hear Steve’s breaths coming in sharp pants beside him- he can hear- _what is that_ \- he turns his head and then another Thing tackles them. The time before they fall is like an eternity compressed into a single second. Tony sees Steve’s eyes widen, and then they are dropping like stones, wind whistling through his hair,

Steve is shouting, desperately grasping at empty air- he can’t- he can’t save them, he can't do anything as the ground rushes up to meet them- Steve slams into the ground first, and the thump of his body hitting the earth is the last thing Tony hears before the pain lances up his body like a fire and he ceases to be.

The Things click in delight and appear next to their corpses, absorbing their energy from dying where they shouldn’t have. They can keep these for a long time before their minds turn to mush from the loops. They can keep them going for hundreds of years, feeding their master who sits patiently in a cell.

Meanwhile, the candle still lit in the bathroom burns quickly down, the back door is still open from their frantic run, the little charcoal pencil rolls under a pile of furs, the Things drag the deer away from the living room and there’s silence. The dust comes as if brought by a wind and coats over the place. And then Tony slams into the ground and creates a scar in a meadow not too far from an abandoned tower.

 

**.**

**.**

**.**

 

The week after Steve kissed him, Tony comes downstairs singing with joy. He’s bustling about the tower, wondering how he landed someone like Steve, when Jarvis calls out from where the suit had been standing in the corner.

“Sir,” he begins. “We’re out of memory.”

Tony turns to stare. “I cleared out everything before we went to fight the blonde,” he says in disbelief. “We shouldn’t be out of memory.”

“And yet we are sir,” Jarvis says dryly. “Would you like to review your files?”

Steve comes downstairs at that exact moment and raises an eyebrow at Tony’s open mouth. “Something wrong?”

“We’re out of memory,” Tony murmurs, just as Jarvis beams out a the holograph of his files. There are dozens of them, at least thirty-six, and he opens up them all, his gut clenching.

“Why- why do we have thirty-six files of the same thing?” He asks, his voice cracking. “Why are they all the same?”

Steve comes to stand beside him, and together they review all the files and conclude they are all the same, they all end with something jumping the suit from behind, like a jump scare in a horror game. He had programmed Jarvis to save files should he be attacked and put out of commission so that they could review what happened.

Tony’s staring at it when he realizes that the files were all saved on different dates, each one exactly sixty-four days behind the other.  And then he realizes that in the most recent file, the one still in progress, was exactly what they did, exactly what he said when they landed here, every exchange, every sight seen was exactly the same- except that none of the files had this exchange going on.

He turns to Steve with a grave expression, and Steve balks because he wore that expression for weeks after Sokovia. “I think you should sit down,” Tony tells him. Steve sits so fast the furs slide out from under him. “I think,” Tony pauses to gather his words, they all fly away from him. His hands are trembling and he watches this with a remote feeling of worry. “I think we are in a loop.”

“A loop?” Steve asks, eyebrows furrowed.

“Yeah. We’re in series of events that play out and then repeat, over and over again. This isn’t just time travel, it’s replaying events because we always make the same decisions. Then, they reset our memories, maybe we die at the end, but then we always, always end up here. But they can’t, maybe they didn’t know that they had to erase my suit too, so now we’re essentially self-aware.”

“So the pipes,” Steve breathes. “The candles, the noises at night, the charcoal pencil, oh my god,” Tony watches him come to the same conclusion as him. “It’s all us, all things we left behind.”

“I think we die,” Tony tells him honestly, watches Steve stop breathing. “I think that the noises at night get my suit and then they get us. I think that the only way to break the loop is to die before that happens.”

“Like in a dream when you force yourself to wake up,” he says. “But how do we know for sure?”

“We don’t,” Tony shrugs, his vision blurring, and Steve catches his arm before he falls and tugs him closer. “I could be totally wrong. It could be a glitch in my system. I don’t know if we’re…if it’ll work.”

“There are no glitches in your system,” Steve snorts. “I trust you, Tony. You should know that by now. I'd trust you with my life.”

“Good,” Tony chokes. “Good, because I think I'm going to have to kill you.”

Tony takes a deep, shuddering breath. He didn’t know how to ask Steve how they should…how they should die, but Steve caught on and pulled him impossibly closer. “There’s a gun upstairs,” Steve tells him softly. “It’s a matchlock gun, there’s rudimentary gunpowder and bullets.”

“Matchlock guns require the lighting of a wick,” Tony says dully. “There’s- one will be left,” he whispers, and Steve breathes out. He understands then. One person will have to watch the other die.

“I’ll,” Steve says, his voice catching. “I’ll do it.” He doesn’t allow himself to entertain the possibility that Tony could be wrong, doesn’t allow himself to even go on that tangent. Tony had jumped in front of him to save his life. There's not a bone in Steve’s body that doubts Tony’s willingness to sacrifice himself to save his life, so he doesn't doubt Tony now.

They had come a long way from what they were.

Tony looks up at him, and his face crumples. “I can’t do that to you,” he says adamantly. “I just can’t.”

Steve gives him a serious look. “You have no choice.”

“I do,” he says. “Jarvis…Jarvis has a safe word.”

“I do not approve of this course of action,” Jarvis says blandly, but Tony stops him.

“I approve,” he murmurs. He turns to Steve and explains. “I can ask Jarvis to- to kill us.”

Steve’s arms tighten involuntarily around Tony.

“You’re going to tell the suit to kill us?”

“I have a small gun in the left side,” Tony mumbles. “Five bullets. Emergencies only.”

Steve kisses him. Tony kisses back, all teeth and grabbing hands and desperation breathed out between the two of them. “Okay,” he whispers. “I trust you.”

There are no tears in Tony's eyes but the waver in his voice tells him everything he needs to know. “You shouldn’t,” he whispers.

Outside, the noises grow steadily in volume, a growling that sounds like a threat.

Steve pushes Tony’s face into his neck and hides his own face in Tony’s hair. Tony murmurs, “come on, Jarvis,” and the suit clunks over to them, whirring.

The last word Tony says is “now.”

* * *

Steve surges upward, gasping and choking, screaming hoarsely, yanking and pulling at the things around him- but then a voice cuts through all the noise, “STEVE!”

He yells again and shrinks back- it is Natasha, she is standing across from him with her hands on her hips and dark shadows under her eyes. He blinks up at her, his vision still blurry, before reaching a hand to yank out the IV from his arm and making a break for it down the corridor. He opens every door he gets to, Natasha running behind him, until he finally opens one where Tony is sitting up and holding Clint in a death grip, demanding to know the date.

He drops Clint as soon as he sees Steve and then Steve is running to him and holding onto him as if he’d never let go. Tony is making choked sounds, telling him to go back and put back on his IV, crying out loud, we can’t have you dying now, Steve is laughing and telling him he was right, told you that you would be right, and Natasha and Clint watch with some trepidation this exchange because the last time Steve and Tony really interacted they were yelling at each other.

Later that night, after Steve had refused to move from Tony’s room and so they moved in his bed, Steve clambers into Tony’s bed and tells him, “I’m…actually not that pissed that this happened.”

Tony smiles at him drowsily. He misses Steve’s long hair and stubble, but somehow this clean shaven look was more his Steve than anything. “What, you’re glad that we got stuck in a fucking time loop that we still have no idea what really happened in because we cut short the loop we were in?”

Steve takes a moment to process that. “No,” he laughs. “I’m glad I found out you were my soulmate.”

Tony gives him a serious look. “You _think_ I am your soulmate.”

“No,” he shakes his head. “I know you are my soulmate. The Universe doesn’t choose who your soulmate is for you, you know. The Universe just knows which one _you_ will choose.”

“You're too deep for this world,” Tony yawns. “But I choose you too. Make all the Pokemon jokes you want.”

Steve gets a funny look on his face. “Pokemon?”

“Oh my god,” Tony says, horrified. “We’re doing that first thing when we get out of here.”

There's a comfortable silence, until Tony breaks it by saying, “do you know where the blonde is being held?”

Steve makes a non-committed noise against Tony’s neck. “No.”

“Cause I think we should send her a fruit basket,” he muses. “And a postcard.”

Steve snorts. "The back of the postcard should say thank you in size 40 comic sans ms."

Tony turns his head to grin at him. " _This_ is why you're my soulmate," he says appreciatively, and Steve bursts out laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
